Christianity is heading for a full allegorization

[vulcanlogician]

I agree that ideology is different than dogma. Wasn't trying to conflate the two. Moreso, what I meant was... for me personally, I prefer a critical examination of one idea at a time to buying a set of ideas in one package. I wasn't trying to say ideology was inherently bad, nor was I saying other people shouldn't have an ideology if they happen to find one satisfying.

@Belacqua

The error you make is thinking that humans are no longer "myth-creating" creatures. We are. It's not as if a special segment of history was set aside for genuine myth-making, and all myths created outside that period are invalid. We create UFO myths and all sorts of things, and we will probably do so until we are extinct. Lord of the Rings is just as valid myth-wise as Perseus. I don't see it as consumerist. I mean, how many heroes from Greek mythology have been sold as action figures at Walmart? The same thing happened with Tolkien.

I agree with some of what you said. There are distinctions that I glossed over between fiction, myth, and religion. Fair enough.

[Ferrocyanide]

Approaching the Bible, The Lord of the Rings, and Greek mythology all in the same way is, to me, bizarre and consumerist. All of these works were created and used in fundamentally different ways. 

The different parts of the Bible were written for different purposes, but have been treated and interpreted as sacred by very serious people for a very long time. The Bible as we read it now is not just the text -- we read it through the lens of all the interpretations that have come since it was new. The Lord of the Rings is a pastiche of real epics, written for children. For an adult to take it seriously now would indicate a serious developmental issue. Greek mythology has never existed just on its own. It is presented in other works, including Homer, Plato, Dante, Botticelli, Rembrandt, Freud, Nietzsche, etc. These are concepts woven into the fabric of Western thought, with varied and often contradictory uses. To know what the myths mean in any given context requires background knowledge, not just personal opinion. 

If we approach all of these things in the same way, we deracinate and devalue what it really is. To make it into some kind of Baskin Robbins "choose your favorite" is liberal consumer society at its worst. 

To detach a text from all of its history, institutional use, and social nuance, is to take away nearly everything it means. Then once we've completely deracinated it, and approach it with our own personal interpretation, we can easily use it to mean whatever we want it to. It easily becomes a method to reinforce prejudice, rather than teach something new. In fact this is the trouble with Bible reading today -- both fundies and fundie atheists just imagine it means whatever they imagine, and don't take the trouble to work on it.

The people who wrote the various parts of the Bible would be priests, the master leader, the big cheese or whatever you want to call him.
It is highly likely that he took his text seriously and wanted the people reading it to take it seriously and to spread it to the regular joes and to have them take it seriously.
(I’m sure there are parts that are reporting about actual events, actual warfare. Let’s set those aside for a moment. I am talking about the magical components for now.)

The Lord of the Rings is written by an entertainer/novelist/author and NOT a priest who wanted his works to be believed. He holds no position of priestly power. He is not trying to start a cult.
Under such conditions, when everyone believes that it is a work of fiction, it is unlikely that it will switch modes. It is not going to go from being believed to be a fiction from being believed to be fact.

The Tanakh/Bible started as something believed to be factual, something that the priest class told the people and they told them that it was all true.
If a person asked, “Hey is that true”. As soon as a priest says “No, it is a story I made up to convey an idea”, the story loses value. All the human and god interactions turn fake.
You can’t start a religion that way.

You can find moral stories in all sorts of places. You can find them in children’s cartoons such as the Smurfs, Ghostbusters, The Transformers, Arthur, The 3 little pigs and plenty more.
You can find it in Greek mythology and the Lord of the rings.
I believe that was the message Vulcanlogician was bringing to us on page 7 of this thread.
He wanted the Bible to be placed in the same section as the Smurfs. It’s just entertainment with some parts teaching the children about being moral and immoral.

Who knows, one day, judaism/christianity/islam/mormonism might be viewed as one of those children’s cartoons.

Once everyone reaches the belief that a book is fiction, it is unlikely that it will switch modes and return to mode of “religion”. It is a one way street.
The author of the book would be regarded as entertainers and not a prophet/priest/messenger.
People who compose allegories are entertainers.

[Fake Messiah]

No, that would be dogma. We already have a word for that. Ideological in the sense of being pejorative typically means that one's ideology dictates their beliefs to a greater extent than is common in the average person, or is held irrationally.

There you go. There is hardly a difference. Dogma is also something that is dictated that must be believed, just like let's say communist ideology - you must believe that your leader is the greatest, you must believe that party is right, you must believe that "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" works, etc.

Strictly speaking, everybody has an ideology, except for the fact that the word is not often used in that sense in colloquial discourse.

I wouldn't say so. Belacqua claims that trusting science is an ideology. But science is evidence, and there is no ideology of evidencism.

[The Grand Nudger]

Let's face it. Serious people took the Greek mythology seriously tone time. For an adult to do so today would be at least unusual. perhaps the same should be true of the Bible? Maybe we should regard it as a collection of works from particular time periods that attempted to convey the views of one part of the society of the time, but that should not be taken seriously by adults outside of that?

That is the topline summary of centuries of scholarship on the subject, after all.

[Angrboda]

Strictly speaking, everybody has an ideology, except for the fact that the word is not often used in that sense in colloquial discourse.

I wouldn't say so. Belacqua claims that trusting science is an ideology. But science is evidence, and there is no ideology of evidencism.

Science is many things, but it is not evidence. Scientific practice may use evidence or embrace philosophies that value evidence but science is not evidence itself. And yes, evidentialism is an ideology, being the set of beliefs and propositions that hold the proper place of belief rests upon things having the right sort of evidence. You want to try to make science some sort of neutral, objective thing through contorted language and conflation of meanings, but it is not. I can only suspect you want to do this because you think that doing so can render it immune to the sort of criticism to which ideologies are subject. All you've shown is that you can abuse language. Science readily becomes an ideology such as under the influence of the Vienna Circle in the early 20th century wherein the type of philosophical standards and values was enshrined as ultimate truth in what came to be known as scientism. You seem to embrace scientism yourself by trying to distinguish scientific values and philosophies associated with science as being somehow independent from, and uninfluenced by subjectivity, thereby rendering it some kind of superior standard. That is pure scientism, a form of worship of science. The only problem is that it cannot be defended logically and leads its proponents to saying stupid things like, "science is evidence."

[Fake Messiah]

As Steven Novella said "There's nothing magical about science. It is simply a systematic way for carefully and thoroughly observing nature and using consistent logic to evaluate results. Which part of that exactly do you disagree with? Do you disagree with being thorough? Using careful observation? Being systematic? Or using consistent logic?"

Now, some people, like communists, nazis, or some religions, do mix ideology with science, but then it's not science anymore, but pseudoscience. And that's why ideologies and religions are usually against science because science looks at the evidence to reach a conclusion, unlike ideology and religion which start with the conclusion and then dismiss the evidence that proves them wrong.

[Angrboda]

As Steven Novella said "There's nothing magical about science. It is simply a systematic way for carefully and thoroughly observing nature and using consistent logic to evaluate results. Which part of that exactly do you disagree with? Do you disagree with being thorough? Using careful observation? Being systematic? Or using consistent logic?"

Now, some people, like communists, nazis, or some religions, do mix ideology with science, but then it's not science anymore, but pseudoscience. And that's why ideologies and religions are usually against science because science looks at the evidence to reach a conclusion, unlike ideology and religion which start with the conclusion and then dismiss the evidence that proves them wrong.

The fact that a scientific ideology isn't disagreeable in no way affects whether it is ideological. The nazis didn't find their ideology disagreeable either. Science without values is aimless. It is the aimed judgement of its practitioners which makes it valuable. You are conflating two different senses of the word ideological. One sense, in which ideological is defined as, "3. Of or relating to a political, economic, or other ideology (see ideology n. 4); based on a principle or set of unshakeable beliefs," [*] which applies in the case of your communists and nazis, and another sense in which ideological means, "2. Occupied with or motivated by an idea or ideas, esp. of a visionary kind; speculative, idealistic. Cf.," [*] which is the type of ideological which science is. You're not wrong in saying that mixing ideological influences of the first type is bad, but you are wrong in denying that science qualifies in the second sense in which it relates to an idea or ideas about how to collect evidence and construct supportive arguments for one's conclusions. So, as noted previously, you're just abusing language by insisting that a word be applied in only one sense to the exclusion of other senses which are equally valid. I don't know that there's a name for that, but it is closely related to equivocation in which one manipulates in which sense a word is used in an illegitimate way. Such contortions of logic are the end result of you mixing your ideological views on science (in the sense of being unshakeable beliefs) with the less problematic ideological views of science in which it, as an idea about ideal processes of discovery aimed at revealing truth, is merely a tool embraced by people generally.

[*] Definitions taken from the Oxford English Dictionary.

[GrandizerII]

As Steven Novella said "There's nothing magical about science. It is simply a systematic way for carefully and thoroughly observing nature and using consistent logic to evaluate results. Which part of that exactly do you disagree with? Do you disagree with being thorough? Using careful observation? Being systematic? Or using consistent logic?"

Dot points:


People, namely scientists, conduct science. Science does not conduct itself.

Scientists, being people, can sometimes fail at using logic properly to evaluate results. They can also end up doing very shoddy research.

Subjectivity plays an inevitable role when interpreting results and determining conclusions. And as such, biases are at play as well.

Politics itself is certainly at play when it comes to conducting science (e.g., grant providers funding only selective topics for research depending on certain ideological views).

Science has known limitations.

Your view of science (and Steven's view of science) sounds quite ideological to me.

[Fake Messiah]

Such contortions of logic are the end result of you mixing your ideological views on science (in the sense of being unshakeable beliefs) with the less problematic ideological views of science in which it, as an idea about ideal processes of discovery aimed at revealing truth, is merely a tool embraced by people generally.

And what exactly is my ideology? That I rely on evidence?

People, namely scientists, conduct science. Science does not conduct itself.

Scientists, being people, can sometimes fail at using logic properly to evaluate results. They can also end up doing very shoddy research.

Sure, scientist can make a mistake and be biased in his research, but that is where many other scientists come in and test his claims and make scientific consensus, so that in the end science is objective.

And if someone here is claiming that science (scientific method) is not the only thing, or not sufficient, to come to the truth, then what (else) is there? Theology? Astrology? Marxism?

[HappySkeptic]

As Steven Novella said "There's nothing magical about science. It is simply a systematic way for carefully and thoroughly observing nature and using consistent logic to evaluate results. Which part of that exactly do you disagree with? Do you disagree with being thorough? Using careful observation? Being systematic? Or using consistent logic?"

Dot points:


People, namely scientists, conduct science. Science does not conduct itself.

Scientists, being people, can sometimes fail at using logic properly to evaluate results. They can also end up doing very shoddy research.

Subjectivity plays an inevitable role when interpreting results and determining conclusions. And as such, biases are at play as well.

Politics itself is certainly at play when it comes to conducting science (e.g., grant providers funding only selective topics for research depending on certain ideological views).

Science has known limitations.

Your view of science (and Steven's view of science) sounds quite ideological to me.

Yup, scientists are flawed.  Some theories are later found to be incomplete or incorrect.  The point is that the the work of many scientists is self-correcting IF they are actually doing science, and not pseudoscience.

I have worked in science, and the proper mindset is to identify any piece of data that does not conform to theory.  That is when things get interesting.  Usually the data is bad.  Sometimes is leads to new information or theory.

Pseudo-science ignores contrary data, and invites bad data without skepticism if the data advances a particular point of view.

The only ideology a scientist has is that there is only one reality, and critical investigation will eventually uncover it.  If investigation blows a previous belief out of the water, so be it - provided the evidence is found to be sound.

Science is also never a sure thing.  There are uncertainties around every measurement, and possibility of mistakes.  It is always a probabilities game, but it only takes one strong experiment that can be reproduced to change minds.

During the whole "Invermectin treats COVID" debacle, I had friends who told me that it has been proved to work in combination with Zinc. I was skeptical for a few reasons.
1) This was a single tiny study.
2) Zinc is known to be used by the body to fight viruses, but there has never been evidence that taking Zinc helps any infection
3) There has never been good evidence for Invermectin being a treatment for other viruses.
4) Invermectin by-itself has already proven to NOT be effective at treating COVID.

Sure enough, the study was debunked. But, to a right-winger who wants to believe, this one study was "scientific proof" that it worked. It wasn't. That's not the way science works. The probability, based on the 4 points I made was that the study was bad. Of course, it could've been later found to be correct. That's the beauty of science - more evidence reduces uncertainty.